The use of the Internet for the access and completion of electronic forms, such as Web browser forms, has become increasingly prevalent and useful. For example, forms are used both to support business processes internal to companies and to provide an easy way for users of the Internet to provide information to another entity for completion of a desired transaction. In completing forms for financial transactions, software distribution, and any forms requiring confidential and/or secure information and data, for example, it is common to use a digital signature to authenticate the form. Digital signatures are electronic security marks that allow for verification of the source of the particular file and verification that the file has not been tampered with since it was digitally signed. Digital signatures thus provide assurances, including authenticity of the signer of the digital information, integrity of the content (i.e., the content of the document has not been modified since the digital signature was applied), and the ability to prove the origin of the signed content to prevent denial of association with the signed content by the signing party.
While there are numerous benefits associated with applying a digital signature to a form file of a form, in which a form file, such as an XML file, contains data entered into a form, problems can occur in the process of applying a digital signature to a form file. Such problems can cause failure of the signing process and/or corruption of the form file of a form, for example.
In applying a digital signature to a form file, form applications running on a client and a server may be used. However, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to apply a digital signature to a form file where the version of the form application running on the client is different from the version of the form application used by the server. Such problem is exacerbated by the numerous versions and version upgrades of form applications available on the market and the multiple actors involved in determining whether to purchase and/or apply such version upgrades on the client versus server ends.
Although specific problems have been addressed in this Background, this disclosure is not intended in any way to be limited to solving those specific problems.